Loch Ness in the Great Glen, as seen from the hills above Foyers. The Nessie legend has led to a booming tourism industry in the area.
Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

An examination of Loch Ness using DNA sampling techniques will try to establish exactly what lives in the UK’s largest freshwater body by volume – it may also discover whether there is any scientific basis to the monster legend.

The mission will involve genetic code being extracted from the loch over a two-week period to determine the types of creatures that live there.

Prof Neil Gemmell, a scientist from New Zealand leading the global team of researchers, said: “I’m going into this thinking it’s unlikely there is a monster, but I want to test that hypothesis. What we’ll get is a really nice survey of the biodiversity of Loch Ness.”

Prof Neil Gemmell will lead a global team of scientists. Photograph: PA

After the team’s trip next month, the samples will be sent to labs in Australia, Denmark, France and New Zealand to be analysed.

“There’s absolutely no doubt that we will find new stuff, and that’s very exciting,” Gemmell said. “While the prospect of looking for evidence of the Loch Ness monster is the hook to this project, there is an extraordinary amount of new knowledge that we will gain from the work about organisms that inhabit Loch Ness.”

Many believe sightings of the “monster” could in fact be a large fish, such as a catfish or sturgeon. Scientists will explore this theory during their investigation.

Whenever a creature moves through its environment, it leaves tiny fragments of DNA from skin, scales, feathers, fur, faeces and urine.

Gemmell said: “This DNA can be captured, sequenced and then used to identify that creature by comparing the sequence obtained to large databases of known genetic sequences from hundreds of thousands of different organisms.”

He predicts they will document new species of life, particularly bacteria, and provide important data on the extent of several new invasive species recently seen in the loch, such as Pacific pink salmon.

A local expert and lead researcher on the Loch Ness Project will also join the team. Adrian Shine told reporters in 2017 that the lasting appeal of the legend was that “as the human world shrinks, people tend to look for something bigger than themselves – something frightening, something mysterious or something hidden”.

There was a flurry of excitement among Nessie hunters in 2016 when sonar-imaging revealed something at the bottom of the loch that resembled the shape commonly attributed to the beast.

It transpired, however, that Shine and his team had discovered an abandoned prop from the 1970 film The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. The 10-metre (30ft) model was discovered 180 metres beneath the surface by a robot, which was surveying the loch.

Stories about the loch concealing a monster date to the seventh century. Adomnán’s Life of St Columba tells of the saint encountering “a water beast”. Columba, who founded the abbey on Iona, is reported to have a saved a man from the creature by ordering it to retreat.

In modern times, more than 1,000 people have claimed to have seen Nessie, which has in turn bolstered the local tourist industry. The nearby village of Drumnadrochit is home to two permanent Loch Ness monster exhibitions.

The development of photography sparked wider interest in the legend, and photographs taken in 1933 and 1934 featured on the front pages of national newspapers.

The 1934 image, known as ‘the surgeon’s photograph’, which appears to show a creature with an elongated neck and head looming out of the water, is probably the most famous picture of the monster.

This 1934 image, known as ‘the surgeon’s photograph’, featured on the front page of several newspapers. Photograph: AP

It was exposed as a hoax in 1994 by Christian Spurling, who said his stepfather, Marmaduke Wetherell, had arranged the stunt with the photographer Col Robert Wilson. The “creature” in the picture was in fact a toy submarine with a fakesnake head attached.

Successive scientific examinations, including a 10-year study by the Loch Ness Phenomena Investigation Bureau in the 1960s and 70s – have produced no evidence that the legendary beast exists.

In 2003, the BBC funded an extensive search that used 600 sonar beams and satellite tracking to sweep the loch. The team had speculated that a plesiosaur, a species that became extinct with the dinosaurs, may have survived in the chilly loch, despite the preference of marine reptiles for subtropical waters. However, their search showed there was no trace of such a creature lurking there.